MOHAMAD BAZZI, mohamad.bazzi@nyu.edu, @BazziNYU
Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and is a journalism professor at New York University.

He recently wrote the piece “The Middle East conflict is spiraling. Biden must force Israel to end the war” for the Guardian: “Without a huge airlift of U.S. weapons since October, Israel would run out of bombs to drop on Gaza. But Biden has refused to use that leverage to force Netanyahu’s government to accept a ceasefire. In fact, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to hide the extent of U.S. arms shipments and other recent military aid to Israel — unlike the detailed breakdowns that Washington has provided of its billions of dollars in weapons shipments to Ukraine.

“Recent reports in the Israeli press make clear that because of a global shortage of ammunition that started with the Ukraine war, Israel would not be able to sustain its bombardment of Gaza without the U.S. resupplying the Israeli military.

“Biden has the power to restrain Israel — he has simply refused to use it. Biden is also aware of the responsibility that comes with providing an ally like Israel with a virtually unlimited pipeline of weapons to continue its war.

“On 30 January, reporters at the White House asked Biden whether he holds Iran responsible for the killing of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan. ‘I do hold them responsible in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it,’ Biden said.

“It was a remarkable admission by the U.S. president, and it poses a basic follow-up question: does Biden think the same about the more than 27,000 deaths in Gaza enabled by a steady supply of U.S. weapons he has provided to Israel?”